32-year-old Sadhna Yadav is one of the 10 directors of the first and all-women led potato chips company in Uttar Pradesh’s Firozabad district. As PTI reports via The New Indian Express: “Earlier my family members would say that so many people have tried their hands at business but are biting dust now. There’s no need to go out. Others in the village would jeer at us when we went out to work.”
“They would say these women have gone mad but the same people now see us with respect and say look what miracle these women have done,” Sadhna told PTI, encapsulating how the fortunes have swung for the chip-making women.
Firozabad falls in the potato belt of UP and is even more famous for its glass works and bangles.
The company ‘Arch Chips’ in the Shikohabad area is not a typical business firm. It has 10 directors and 650 shareholders – all of them women and members of a self help group (SHG) with none having business experience and only a handful whom have studied beyond school. The SHG members contributed Rs 3,000 (about US$38) each while the 10 directors additionally took a loan from a bank to set up the factory in April last year.
The first chips bag rolled off the line in November 2021 and by April of this year, Arch Chips has produced over six lakh (600,000) packets that have been distributed across the district through SHG members.
“Arch Chips’ potato chips are on par, or even better, than some of the big brands, be it in terms of taste or packaging,” Firozabad Chief Development Officer Charchit Gaur told PTI.
Source: PTI report via The New Indian Express
